Topic: What is the purpose of the "demonic" tag?

demonic is a tag with over 1000 posts and no wiki description. Does it have a legitimate purpose? It seems redundant with demon, demonification, and demon-based anatomy tags to me.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the demon species tag, as similar to alien, there's no common visual elements for a demon. Red eyes can make a demon in one image, and not in another. A spade tail can make a demon in one image, and not another. Or bat wings, or horns. Characters like loona_(helluva_boss) tend to be tagged demon (and hellhound) based solely on lore despite looking like a normal canine anthro (aside from red_sclera).

I'd rather have a tag like demonic instead, which while not the clearest descriptor, is an adjective based on how something looks, rather than being based on lore or someone's say-so.

I've discovered we also have a robotic tag, which is similarly questionable. I think that one is a bigger problem, given it can also be used to describe cybernetics and robotic personalities/behavior.

I'd make a BUR to convert demon to demonic as per Watsit's suggestion, but there's a mountain of aliases and implications that would have to be undone first.

Looking back I think i'm fine with keeping both demon and demonic separate. Demon is a species tag, and species gets a lot bit of leeway with twys. So we can have demons that don't look demonic, demonic looking beings that aren't demons, and demons which look demonic. The problem is getting people to tag them both.

snpthecat said:
Demon is a species tag, and species gets a lot bit of leeway with twys. So we can have demons that don't look demonic, demonic looking beings that aren't demons, and demons which look demonic. The problem is getting people to tag them both.

They may have leeway, but there are still standards for species tags to have some identifiable visual elements and consistency, even if the tags' application is looser than general tags (e.g. being able to tag a lynel when we only see its four hooved legs, where those four hooved legs are an identifiable visual feature of the species; I can't post a picture of a generic looking dragon and tag it as a lynel even if the artist says it's one, because it doesn't look like one). Without consistent visual elements, demon can be (and is) tagged on literally anything a tagger wants to tag it on, and serves no purpose other than to say "someone called this a demon at some point". These are "demons":
post #5864682 post #1589958
but these aren't:
post #5654271 post #65310

Even hybrids have more visual consistency (requiring some visual elements of the species its a hybrid of), but we don't tag them because they're still not consistent enough and could apply to vastly different interpretations that shouldn't be under the same species tag. I just don't see a purpose in a species tag that's defined such that these:
post #5366855 post #5061769 post #2578234 post #2039683
all fit, while identical-looking creatures can be equally not-demons if the artist says so. Not to mention the subtags like canid_demon or owl_demon, which are just a canid someone called a demon or an owl someone called a demon. Even humanoid is better than this.